[Nancy1999]

I think you are referring to a recessive gene, some people say it skips a generation, but this may or may not be true, it depends, on several factors. Each animal gets two genes for each trait, one from each parent. Some genes are recessive and some are dominant. In order for a recessive gene to show up, each parent has had to give the offspring one recessive gene, in other words you need two recessive genes for it to show up. For example, you boyfriend's parents each had to give him a blue eye gene for the blue eyes to show up. Brown eyes only require one brown eye gene for it to show up because brown is dominate. So brown eyed people may have one brown-eyed gene, and one blue eye gene or two brown-eyed genes, but their eye appear brown. The darker color is always dominant. Even within the various shades of blue the darker blue is always dominant.

Don't worry about your thread getting off track, many of the more interesting threads do. I understood what you meant when you were talking about diabetes, and it's even more complicated because there are two different kinds of diabetes, and nobody thinks your an idiot, it's often hard to explain what we are talking about in a few sentences.